Wrong ballots handed out to more than 150 voters in Newport News

NEWPORT NEWS — The wrong ballots were handed out to voters in at least three voting precincts in Newport News on Tuesday, leading about 153 people to cast ballots for a congressional candidate outside their district.

Incorrect ballots were given to voters at the Charles, Richneck and Oyster Point precincts, according to officials at those polling stations.

Though ballot scanning machines rejected the ballots, officials initially thought the machines were at fault before discovering the problem with the ballots.

Also on Tuesday, a number of voters in various precincts came up as "inactive" on the voter rolls. They were allowed to vote if they could show a valid ID matching their registered address.

All three precincts involved in the faulty ballot issue were part of a major recent redistricting. They became part of the 2ndCongressional District, in which U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, the Republican incumbent, faced off Tuesday against Democratic challenger Paul Hirschbiel.

Some voters arriving at the three precincts early Tuesday, however, were handed ballots listing candidates from the 1st Congressional District race, in which U.S. Rep. Rob Wittman, the incumbent Republican, faced a challenge from Democrat Adam Cook and Independent Green candidate Glenda Gail Parker.

Before polling officials realized the problem, about 85 people had already used the incorrect ballots at the Charles precinct, while 50 did so at Oyster Point and 18 at Richneck, according to precinct chiefs.

Faulty ballots were also delivered to one or more of the city's 44 other precincts as well, though the Daily Press has not learned of any other precincts where they were actually handed out to voters.

Vicki V. Lewis, the general registrar for the City of Newport News, did not return several messages for comment on Tuesday. She was in a meeting Tuesday night when a Daily Press reporter went to her office.

But Newport News Councilwoman Pat Woodbury expressed dismay, saying the registrar's office should have been better prepared. "How could this possibly happen?" she asked. "It's unbelievable to me."

About 85 of the wrong ballots were cast at the Charles precinct at the B.C. Charles Elementary School on Menchville Road between 6 and 6:30 a.m., said Linda Odell, the chief election official there.

"First we thought we had a machine issue," Odell said. Though poll workers checked the front of the ballot packages, she said, some faulty ballots "were stuck in the middle of a package."

"This is the first time this has ever happened to me, and I've been doing this for 20 years," Odell said.

At the Oyster Point precinct at Yates Elementary School, about 50 votes were cast on incorrect ballots between 6 a.m. and 6:30 a.m., said Debra Ward, that precinct's chief.

Ward described a sealed "zippered bag" loaded with ballots delivered to each polling station. "It's just a human error," Ward said. "A human will put 'X' amount of ballots in a bag for that particular precinct. And whoever put them in the bag grabbed some ballots from the wrong pile."

She added that with the "mad rush" to start the day — with lots of people lined up to vote at dawn — she didn't double check the ballots.

Ward, like Odell, said her first thought was that there was something wrong with the scanning machine that was rejecting the ballots. "It's not unusual to have problems with" the machines, she said. "They can be temperamental. So I just assumed that it was getting temperamental."

At the Richneck precinct, at Richneck Elementary School in Denbigh, 18 votes were cast on incorrect ballots between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., precinct chief Barbara Manley said.

"There was pressure to get everything set up and ready to go," Manley said. "I just asked one of the workers to count the ballots and distribute them to the people," not noticing the problem.

Manley said she called a city election office about the machines rejecting the ballots, and they told her to check the ballots.

All of the problem ballots were set aside and will be counted manually, the precinct captains said. A handful of voters, she said, realized later that they were given the wrong ballots, coming back later to vote provisionally.

It's unclear what will happen to the faulty ballots now.

Odell said her understanding is that they would be counted for everything but the congressional races. But officials with the State Board of Elections also did not return a phone call.

Another issue on Tuesday is that lots of people across the region were showing up as "inactive" voters when they arrived at the polls.

At the Cypress Creek precinct in Smithfield, for example, election official Bobbi Donnelly said "quite a few" voters have turned up in "inactive" status. But their addresses checked out with other forms of identification, she said, so they were allowed to vote.

How a voter winds up as inactive varies, Donnelly said. Typically it's because voter materials mailed to them have been returned twice by the post office. Voting, she said, returns them to active status.